


Time Lost and Gained

by suspiciousteapot



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie ficlets [22]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suspiciousteapot/pseuds/suspiciousteapot
Summary: Anonymous asked: Jamie's POV after he tucks Brianna into bed at Jocasta's on the day they first meet.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Response to a prompt sent to imagineclaireandjamie on tumblr.  
> As always, respectful comments, etc. are greatly appreciated :)

The stairs groaned under their combined weight, but Jamie’s heart hadn’t felt so light since Claire had walked back into his life. How and why Brianna had found him, he would ask later. For now he would accept her presence as a gift from God. His own child with Claire, cradled in his arms; an event he’d never thought could take place outside his dreams. He gently lowered her onto the bed, placing her to the one side so he could pull back the other part coverlet and place her under it. She snuggled into the pillow like a bairn, whuffling around a bit; enjoying the warm coziness of the bed, just as Claire did sometimes when she was content.

He couldn’t resist the urge to tuck the bright strand of hair that had fallen across her bold, bonnie face behind her ear. A wee ear, pointed at the tip, as Claire had told him his own was. It squeezed his heart to notice it, as did the mark behind her ear, the one he’d once kissed in a dream. He couldn’t resist the impulse to kiss it now again, and as he drew back a smile rose to Brianna’s lips, though her slow breaths told him she was still sleeping. He wondered how long she’d done that, and dared imagine it meant she was happy - happy to meet him, what he’d feared and longed for, and never dared hope.

What would she make of him, when she was properly rested and they were able to spend more time together? An unfamiliar worry coiled in his belly; he’d become a father thrice-over, yet had never lived up to the title. When he was young, the children he would one day father were the source of an uncomplicated joy. When Claire was pregnant with Faith, there were so many sources of fear that being a good Da to her once she was born seemed the easy part. With Willie, he was too busy snatching what time and influence over the lad’s upbringing he could to worry whether what parenting he could do was unsatisfactory. But with Brianna he felt uncertain. Always apart, he now felt an intruder in the role of her father. He knew Randall was a good father to her, and he was both deeply grateful and selfishly jealous. He wondered if the other man felt such uncertainty, at first, when Claire had returned to him and Brianna was born, and how he had overcome it. He pushed the thoughts away. It would not do to compare himself to Frank Randall; it would be unfair to both of them as well as to Brianna to try to fill his shoes. No, their relationship would have to be theirs alone. 

Brianna wriggled in her sleep, displacing her blanket and spreading herself across the bed as Claire had told him he was wont to do unless he was holding her. The similarity warmed him, and he could not help note their other likenesses as he tucked her back in.

Physically, she was a female copy of himself, and his own mother. The elegant cheekbones, sharp nose, and the strong jaw, those traits of his own he’d seen develop in her through the wee pictures Claire had showed him. The sheer imposing presence of her, the way she commanded attention of her environment, those aspects of himself that others had related to him and he had passed to her, he could never glean from a _Photograph_. Nor did they capture the way her laugh, the wrinkle between her brows when confused, and her proud carriage echoed her mother’s; the way her eyes, full of hope and fear upon meeting him were so like Claire’s had been in his print shop that he’d momentarily lost his breath.     

Entrusting his words to her dreams, he whispered to her sleeping form, “God, ye are so like her.”

A deep part of him, kept under tight control for so many years, split at the seams. He wept silently for the years he’d lost with his daughter, years he knew only as memories cast to the stars each night, and _Photographs_ at the bottom of the ocean; forever in his heart. 

He knew he’d not have wished her out of her own safe time into the bleak horror of the years after Culloden, yet some selfish part of him mourned that she’d not remained at Lallybroch with Jenny’s weans. He mourned the life he’d lost with her, and the ability to raise her in the ways of his time and country. He’d been joyful to hear her determination to learn _Gàidhlig_ , but it would never be as teaching it to her as a bairn on his knee. And then there were the things he would never understand about her, the parts of her that belonged to her own time. He could learn some, as he had with Claire, but even with his wife there were times when her eyes were distant, trying to communicate something he could never quite know. 

In the darkness, where his daughter would never know it and now that he could allow it of himself, he poured his tears into the hollowness of his loss and the joy of his blessing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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